Other forms of BP's impact showing up in Texas

It's not just the beach getting oiledMurky waste heads to state for disposal, but details skimpy

MONICA HATCHER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE |
July 6, 2010

BP's massive slick on the Gulf is showing up in Texas, and not only as tar balls on the beach.

Some of BP's spilled oil and other waste is making its way to the state for permanent disposal in underground salt domes and injection wells. Texas, home to large numbers of environmental services companies, refineries and oil salvage operators, is among the states recycling or disposing of oily refuse collected during cleanup efforts, according to state officials and BP documents.

But what kind of waste is coming in, how it is being processed and the details of its disposal are something of a mystery. BP and most of its contractors are unwilling or unable to disclose details, and government agencies offer competing or incomplete accounts of what's going where.

Tracking the tons of waste generated by one of the biggest environmental messes the country's ever dealt with isn't easy, but how it's being handled could be important in assessing potential effects on the health and safety of nearby communities.

Richard Steiner, an environmental consultant in Anchorage, Alaska, now working in the Gulf on the cleanup, said information on where the oil is going should be public.

"It would be nice to know that there is integrity in these salt domes so they are not fracturing and that pollutants won't contaminate the ground water supplies," said Steiner, a former professor of marine conservation at the University of Alaska.

Through last week, skimming vessels had collected about 671,000 barrels of oily water mixture — 28 million gallons — since shortly after BP's Macondo well blew out April 20, destroying the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and killing 11 workers.

Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman, said the company is combining data coming from various sources handling waste to make it more accessible to the public.

The U.S. Coast Guard said about 250,000 barrels of oil have been incinerated in controlled surface burns, and BP said another 500,000 barrels have been recovered from systems collecting it directly from the well a mile below the surface on the Gulf seabed.

"You need to know how much spilled, and you need to know how much you picked up, because the difference between the two is what's still out there," said Dan Lawn, an environmental engineer in Valdez, Alaska.

Pick up oil, get credit

Lawn worked on the cleanup after the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 260,000 barrels of crude — 11 million gallons — into Alaska's Prince William Sound 20 years ago.

Lawn said a company may see an advantage in overstating the amount skimmed. "The more you spill, the more you pay, but you can also get credit for what you pick up," he said.

Last week the EPA issued new directives to BP about how it should manage recovered oil waste. The directives include guidelines about how to inform communities about the waste being brought to their towns and requirements to provide access to waste facilities and detailed tracking reports.

Some coastal residents worry that spill waste being brought to nearby landfills might be toxic, and environmentalists are raising concerns that waste being disposed in deep underground wells, like those in Texas, could compromise drinking water.

The new guidelines call for more sampling and analysis of waste and for results to be made public.

Shortly after the Macondo well blew out, BP filed a detailed waste management plan with the EPA outlining how it would handle the soiled booms, wastewater, oiled rags, vegetation, protective gear, tar balls, sludge, and even dead wildlife, and where it would all go once it was collected.

The plan identified several Houston-area facilities, including BP's own Texas City refinery and other sites in the area. The sites are approved for liquid wastes of salvageable hydrocarbons, exploration and production waste, crude oil and spill cleanup waste, according to BP's plan. Solid wastes are being taken to landfills along the Gulf coast in affected states.

'The heaviest stuff' here?

The EPA's new reporting guidelines, however, apply only to the Gulf states hardest hit by the spill - Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama - so the type and quantity of waste being brought to Texas may be harder to calculate. The EPA did not respond to questions about why Texas was excluded from the new directives.

And there is a need for clarity.

For example, the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the disposal of oil and gas waste, said BP notified the commission it would send to Texas up to 140,000 barrels of unused drilling mud and waste water generated from washing out vessel storage compartments. The nonhazardous liquid waste would be contained in a disposal well in Liberty County, a commission spokeswoman said.

He could not say with certainty what the waste is, only that it needed to be pumped into the ground. As of the end of May, 55,000 barrels of oily waste water had been transferred to barges bound for Port Arthur, where Newpark Resources has a processing facility and injection wells, Correges said.

They're not talking

Newpark, a publicly traded company based in The Woodlands and listed on BP's waste management plan as a contractor, declined to answer questions about its work with BP. According to the Newpark website, it operates a 50-acre injection well facility in Big Hill and a 400-acre well site near Beaumont.

United Environmental Services in Baytown , which is also listed on BP's plan, said it couldn't respond to questions last week but confirmed it was receiving oil waste from the Gulf.

A separate company, Trinity Storage Services, which is not listed on the BP waste disposal plan, said it received about 30,000 barrels of drilling mud that BP had planned to use in its failed effort to plug the well using a procedure called a top kill.

Trinity will pump the mud into the company's underground salt cave in Liberty County, said co-owner Ray Welch. "It never comes back," he said. "We put it in a salt cavern, and it stays there forever."